Open Access

Registrations open for ICSTI 2019 Annual Conference in Shanghai

(24 May 2019) The International Council for Scientific and Technical Information (ICSTI) has announced that its 2019 Annual Conference will take place in Shanghai on September 23-26. Themed ‘Open Science and Open Innovation’, the conference is part of a bigger event co-organised with the Shanghai Competitive Intelligence Forum (SCIF) and the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information […]

(23 May 2019) As the move towards open science progresses, the relevance of data sharing and data management increases. In a survey of more than 1,000 researchers in Japan, 95% say they are sharing research data, but a majority of them share only privately among their peers. A whitepaper “Challenges and Opportunities for Data Sharing in […]

Joint CAUL-AOASG Election Statement: developing a strategic approach to open scholarship in Australia

Australia needs a national strategy for open scholarship. (14 May 2019) We are at a stalemate in improving access to scholarly research because of the tension between the needs of research institutions, which want to disseminate their research outputs as widely as possible, and commercial publishers, who dominate academic publishing, and who primarily serve the […]

Knowledge Unlatched and partners launch Open Research Library

(17 May 2019) Free access to scientific content is often limited due to the fragile technical infrastructure around it: content is stored in a variety of versions at various locations and without any uniform search functionalities. The Open Access initiative Knowledge Unlatched has addressed this growing problem and is now launching the Open Research Library […]

The bibliographic data of the National Diet Library can be freely used for various purposes

(7 May 2019) The bibliographic data of the National Diet Library (not including body text) became available for anyone at no charge, whether the purpose of use is commercial or non-commercial, from April 1, 2019. The bibliographic data includes authority data (data of authors and keywords which are arranged for use as clues when searching […]

Springer Nature seeks views on new approach aimed at accelerating the transition to open access

(8 May 2019) In a blog published today, Springer Nature sets out a new approach to research publishing with the goal of increasing the demand from authors to immediately publish their research open access (OA) and growing the supply of journals able to publish OA, potentially enabling even highly selective journals such as Nature to transition to OA. The […]

Reflections on trends in library big deals, consortiums and how it might apply to Singapore?

(3 May 2019) “What were institutions and consortiums doing to better their bargaining position with the big publishers? Was it all about reducing costs for the “big deals”? How successfully were they? Lastly to really negotiate with any credibility, you had to be prepared to walk away from the bargaining table and cancel and indeed […]

Making monographs open

(3 May 2019) A project that aims to slash the cost of producing monographs could help make more of them available to the public for free. But will scholars participate? The University of North Carolina Press is leading an experiment to significantly lower the cost of producing scholarly books — an important step toward a sustainable open-access publishing […]

European University Association releases 2017-2018 EUA Open Access Survey results

(23 Apr 2019) The fourth edition of the EUA Open Access Survey Report tracks European universities’ progress towards Open Access by looking at the degree to which they have implemented institutional policies and practices in the field. The latest survey was conducted in 2017-2018 and focuses on Open Access to research publications, research data management and […]

Norway and Elsevier agree on pilot national licence for research access and publishing

(23 Apr 2019) The Norwegian consortium for higher education and research and Elsevier, the global information analytics business specializing in science and health, today agreed to a pilot national license, providing Norwegian researchers with access to global academic research while making Norwegian research accessible through open access publishing. The agreement is the result of close cooperation between […]

Open Science leads tech trends at STM US Annual 2019

(18 Apr 2019) STM Tech Trends is created annually by STM’s Future Lab, a discussion forum of over 30 STM members. Based on the Delphi-method for technology forecasting, participants identify key trends that may impact scholarly and scientific publishing between now and 2023. More details and recording of the panel discussion at the STM US Conference in Washington, […]

Launch of the Global Alliance of Open Access Scholarly Communication Platforms to democratize knowledge

(12 Apr 2019) In Inclusive Knowledge Societies, people have ready access to information and communications resources, in languages and formats that suit them, and possess the skills to interpret and make use of them. Within this framework, promoting access to scientific scholarship (in the broadest sense) has remained a central challenge to most Member States. UNESCO, […]

(10 Apr 2019) From Scholary Kitchen: On Wednesday, April 17 (11 AM EDT), we’ll be presenting a panel discussion on a topic that’s increasingly dominating the conversation in the scholarly communications community: The Future of Independent and Society Publishing. For details, see the original post here.

Supreme Court of the Philippines to allow public access to e-library

(26 Mar 2019) The Supreme Court (SC) announced that it will be allowing free public access soon to its electronic library (e-Library). The High Court, on the recommendation of Assistant Court Administrator and SC Public Information Office chief, lawyer Brian Keith F. Hosaka, opened the SC e-Library to the public upon proper registration and documentation “to […]